Page 13 of Reign
It’sthevoicefrommy dreams.
For a split second, the boardroom is gone, and another scene slams into place behind my eyes. The smell of smoke and a specific cologne I could never identify until now. A murmured insult in Italian that I understand and respond to in Russian.
Books—rows and rows of them around us, floor to ceiling. A library lamp throws a circle of yellow over his face as he looks up at me from where he’s pushed against a shelf, lips swollen, my Makarov pressed under his jaw.
“We were always a slow-motion bullet.”
It hits in less than a second—then pain lances white hot behind my right eye.
It doesn’t feel like a headache, but a fucking spike driven through my skull. My hand flies up before I can stop it, fingers pressing hard against my temple as my vision distorts.
Half the room goes too bright while the other half dims and blurs. The table seems farther away and too close all at once.Sound warps around me, voices suddenly muffled and painfully loud in the same breath.
“Pakhan?”
Kai’s voice brings me out of it, and I force my spine straight and my hand not to tremble where it presses against my skull. I refuse to give the pain any visible shape beyond the one I can pass off as irritation. I’m not going to fucking wince in front of this table.
“Tell me what you need,” Kai whispers in Russian, and I shake my head.
“I’m fine,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend. My vision clears completely, and I notice that Vincenzo is staring at me. “Jet lag. The city smells different from what I remember.”
Helena’s gaze flicks between Vincenzo and me with amusement and interest in her eyes. Reyes gives nothing away, but King leans back with his politician’s smile curling enough to suggest that he thinks he’s just seen something valuable.
Across the table, Vincenzo’s eyes are dark and intent, and for a heartbeat, everything else might as well not exist. There’s more than recognition in his gaze.
What is going on?
“Pakhan Dragovich,” he says, his voice formal but his eyes still heated. “Welcome to Bucharest.”
The pain throbs once more, then settles into a simmering ache. “King Vieri. Congratulations on the crown.”
He smirks at that. “Congratulations on surviving long enough to take yours,” he returns.
He looks away from me and addresses the others. “Shall we begin? We have a continent to divide and only so many hours before our people start shooting each other out of habit.”
The others chuckle, some more genuinely than others. Papers shuffle. Chairs creak. The meeting shifts into motion, all eyes turning toward the head of the table.
I listen because I have to—shipping routes, port encroachment, cross-border laundering pressure.
Reyes is pushing for revised channel percentages through South America transit. Byrne wants stricter neutrality over certain Eastern holdings. King is speaking about exposure, insulation, and optics. Vincenzo cuts through all of it with a surgeon’s efficiency whenever the conversation starts drifting into posturing instead of business.
Every time that voice moves across the room, some part of me braces for another fucking blow.
He sounds exactly like the man from my dreams—not just similar and not just close.Exact.My mind keeps wanting to reject it because the implications irritate every instinct I’ve got. But my body doesn’t care what my pride wants—it reacts before thought.
Each time Vincenzo speaks, there’s a low pull behind my sternum; an awful sense of familiarity brushing up against rage.
I know this man. I know the shape of his speech, the drag of his consonants, the moments where his tone dips lower. I lean back in my chair, one hand resting loose on the armrest so no one can see the tension in it. Kai notices anyway; he always does.
Just then, Vincenzo turns to me. “The Eastern corridor only works if your people stop treating every customs checkpoint as a provocation.”
I hold his gaze. “Maybe tell your people to stop skulking near routes that don’t belong to them.”
A few eyes flick between us, ready for the show they came here for.
Vincenzo folds his hands on the table. “That would carry more weight if your men hadn’t crossed twice into neutral channels last quarter.”
“Then maybe neutral isn’t as neutral as advertised, King Vieri.”
